The State Department found Cameroon’s assurances credible on 7 January 2026. Thirteen months earlier the Committee against Torture had found that Cameroon collectively expels asylum seekers in violation of non-refoulement.
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Record not available" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point, and it is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
Basis: findings of torture and of collective expulsion in violation of non-refoulement by the United Nations Committee against Torture, and Human Rights Watch’s findings on the people transferred.
The Committee was “deeply troubled” by consistent reports of torture and ill-treatment, summary executions, mass graves, enforced disappearance and “incommunicado detention in unofficial places of detention or military bases.”
Nigerian asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, were subjected to “collective expulsion” without a fair and effective asylum procedure, “in violation of the principle of non-refoulement.” Thirteen months later the United States began transferring people to Cameroon.
Cameroon “immediately detained the deportees, despite having no legal basis for doing so.” Fifteen remained held in Yaoundé. They “felt pressured to return to their countries of origin,” and two already had.
The assurances the State Department found credible are “made generally with respect to all people removed to Cameroon, not to Petitioner specifically.”
A screening officer “did not acknowledge or address” expert evidence that the petitioner was likely to be persecuted, tortured and killed if removed to Cameroon.
On 7 January 2026 the United States Department of State determined that Cameroon’s assurances were credible: that people removed there would not be persecuted or tortured. Thirteen months earlier the United Nations Committee against Torture had said it was “deeply troubled” by torture, mass graves, enforced disappearances and “incommunicado detention in unofficial places of detention or military bases” committed by Cameroon’s own security forces.
The assurance was not about any particular person. As a federal court found, it was “made generally with respect to all people removed to Cameroon, not to Petitioner specifically.”
Within weeks Human Rights Watch found that Cameroon “immediately detained the deportees, despite having no legal basis for doing so,” that fifteen were still held in Yaoundé, that they “felt pressured to return to their countries of origin,” and that two already had.
Transferred. Thirty-six people from nine African countries, across four flights between January and May 2026.
Arrangement. Not published by either government. The Department of State determined on 7 January 2026 that Cameroon’s assurances against persecution and torture were credible.
Human Rights Watch reported that the United States deported “17 men and women, including asylum seekers and a stateless person, from 9 African countries” to Cameroon in January and February 2026 under a secret agreement. The nine were Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
“Cameroonian authorities immediately detained the deportees, despite having no legal basis for doing so.”
Fifteen remained in detention in Yaoundé at the date of the report.
Human Rights Watch, “Abuses in Cameroon After US Deports Third-Country Nationals,” 20 February 2026, by Lauren Seibert, Senior Researcher, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division.
A lawyer assisting some of the deportees said representatives of United Nations agencies spoke to them about the possibility of seeking asylum in Cameroon. Human Rights Watch records that “the deportees told the lawyer they felt pressured to return to their countries of origin.” Two of the first seventeen had already returned to their country of origin.
This is the pattern in its clearest form. Detention without legal basis is the pressure, and return to the country the person left is the outcome. Nobody has to be put on a plane.
Human Rights Watch, 20 February 2026.
Agence France-Presse reports that all thirty-six “had been protected by the US courts from deportation to their countries of origin” before being transferred to Cameroon.
Two sources put detail under that. The Associated Press, reporting on 18 February 2026, records that “eight of those nine previously deported migrants had protection orders granted by a U.S. immigration judge.” The Third Country Deportations Tracker, a joint project of Refugees International and Human Rights First, records that of the eight flown on 16 February 2026, “Seven had been granted withholding of removal and one had been granted deferral of removal under CAT.”
Deferral of removal under the Convention against Torture is granted only where an immigration judge has found it more likely than not that the person would be tortured. One person carrying that finding was flown to Cameroon.
Agence France-Presse, 5 August 2026. Associated Press, Gerald Imray and Nalova Akua, “More third-country nationals have been deported by the US to Cameroon, lawyers tell AP,” 18 February 2026. Third Country Deportations Tracker, Cameroon, checked 8 September 2026. The tracker is a compilation and is cited here for what originates with it; the protection figures for the first flight are the Associated Press’s own reporting.
The finding was recorded by the district court in Alhassan v. Perez: the Government asserted “that there are diplomatic assurances from Cameroon that noncitizens removed to Cameroon will not be persecuted or tortured there, which the Department of State determined to be credible on January 7, 2026.”
Alhassan v. Perez, No. 5:26-cv-00461, 2026 WL 1999306 (S.D. Tex., Laredo Div., 12 June 2026). Read in full.
Paragraph 8, verbatim:
“the Committee remains deeply troubled by the numerous allegations of serious violations of the human rights of civilians committed by the defence and security forces, the Rapid Intervention Battalion, the police and gendarmerie forces and other allied groups in the context of counter-insurgency operations, as well as by the violations committed by non-State armed groups. It is also deeply troubled by consistent reports of torture and ill-treatment, summary executions, murders and mass graves, forced displacement, deliberate attacks on civilian populations, enforced disappearance, abduction, arbitrary and prolonged detention without charge or judicial process, incommunicado detention in unofficial places of detention or military bases, the recruitment and use of children in hostilities by armed groups, sexual and gender-based violence and destruction of civilian property and infrastructure.”
The Committee went on to deplore the inadequacy of such investigations and prosecutions as there had been, which “lends credence to the allegations that the perpetrators of these serious offences are going unpunished.”
CAT/C/CMR/CO/6, distributed 10 December 2024, original French. Read in full from the United Nations document system. Cameroon is the only one of the receiving states documented here to have had a recent review: Ghana was last reviewed in 2011, Eswatini has never been reviewed, and no concluding observations on Equatorial Guinea have ever existed.
This is the finding that bears directly on Cameroon as a receiving state. Paragraph 16:
“the Committee remains concerned about consistent reports that Nigerian asylum-seekers, including unaccompanied children or children separated from their families, have been subjected to collective expulsion for alleged collaboration with terrorist movements without having had access to a fair and effective asylum procedure, in violation of the principle of non-refoulement. It also finds regrettable the lack of information on the safeguards against refoulement that are provided for in national legislation.”
The same paragraph records concern that the armed forces subject Nigerian refugees and asylum seekers in the Far North Region “to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, acts of violence, sexual exploitation and extortion,” and about “the possible failure to identify asylum-seekers who are victims of torture upon their arrival in the country.”
Thirteen months later the United States began sending people to Cameroon, and the State Department certified that Cameroon’s assurances against persecution and torture were credible.
CAT/C/CMR/CO/6, paragraph 16.
On 20 April 2018 the United Nations refugee agency reported that “since the beginning of 2018, 385 Nigerians refugees and asylum-seekers have been forcibly returned from Cameroon,” the majority in the previous month, including 160 on 10 April and a further 118 a week later. Its assessment was stated plainly: “The forced returns are in violation of the principle of no forced returns or non-refoulement.”
That is the receiving state’s own record on the question this page’s Refoulement label turns on, from the agency whose mandate it is.
UN News, reporting UNHCR, 20 April 2018. UNHCR’s own press releases on these returns are not reachable to the Coalition’s tools, which are disallowed by the site’s robots file; the figures here come from the United Nations’ own news service.
“These assurances are made generally with respect to all people removed to Cameroon, not to Petitioner specifically.”
The court added: “The Court is unpersuaded by Respondents’ argument.”
Alhassan v. Perez, S.D. Tex., 12 June 2026.
“the Court is not ‘questioning’ or ‘second guessing’ whether Cameroon will or won’t persecute Petitioner, but is instead asking whether Petitioner has received sufficient process prior to his possible removal to Cameroon, regardless of such assurances.”
Alhadje v. Guardian, No. 1:26-cv-01735-CNS, 2026 WL 1678205 (D. Colo., 10 June 2026). Read in full.
The petitioner, a Somali national holding withholding of removal to Somalia, submitted expert evidence that he was likely to be persecuted, tortured and killed if removed to Cameroon. The court found:
“The USCIS officer did not acknowledge or address this evidence whatsoever in determining that Petitioner did not assert a credible fear-based claim for withholding of removal to Cameroon.”
And that if no immigration judge reviewed it, “Petitioner will not have the opportunity to present his fear-based claim to a neutral adjudicator for correction of USCIS’s potentially erroneous determination. And should Petitioner be erroneously removed to Cameroon, there would be no avenue for him to vindicate his rights in the United States.”
A.A.M. v. Andrews, 815 F. Supp. 3d 1124 (E.D. Cal., 4 Dec. 2025). Read in full.
The Government argued the Third Country Removal Policy “is analogous to that provided in expedited removals … which the Supreme Court upheld against a due-process challenge,” citing Thuraissigiam. The court answered that in expedited removal an asylum officer’s rejection of a credible-fear claim “is reviewed by a supervisor and may then be appealed to an immigration judge,” whereas the Third Country Removal Policy “does not provide any opportunity for Petitioner to appeal to an immigration judge.” The Government confirmed that no such review is available.
A.A.M. v. Andrews, E.D. Cal., 4 Dec. 2025.
In A.A.M. the petitioner was subject to removal to Cameroon “as soon as 24 hours after receiving the Notice of Removal.” His fear interview was set for the next business day; counsel asked for more time and was told on the morning of 25 November that the interview would begin at 11 a.m. that day. In Alhassan the Government moved to remove the petitioner to Cameroon on five days’ notice.
“the sole impediment to petitioner’s prompt removal to Cameroon at this juncture is this Court’s [November 20, 2025] order.”
The same filing stated that the USCIS screening notice “is the final administrative agency decision in the matter.”
Respondents’ status report of 1 December 2025, quoted in A.A.M. v. Andrews.
On 25 February 2026 the District of Massachusetts held that the third-country removal policy “is contrary to section 1231(b)(2)-(3) and the Due Process Clause,” and set aside the policy as embodied in two named memoranda: the Department of Homeland Security’s of 30 March 2025 and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s of 9 July 2025. The same order dissolved the preliminary injunction of 18 April 2025 and dismissed four of the six counts. The judgment was stayed. The First Circuit granted a stay on 16 March 2026, heard argument on 13 May 2026 before Judges Montecalvo, Howard and Aframe, and had not ruled as at 8 September 2026.
D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676-BEM (D. Mass.), Judge Brian E. Murphy, docket 241, 25 February 2026, 81 pages, read in full. Appeal No. 26-1212 (1st Cir.), docket checked 8 September 2026. The Supreme Court stayed the earlier preliminary injunction on 23 June 2025, No. 24A1153, Justice Sotomayor dissenting with Justices Kagan and Jackson.
8 C.F.R. § 208.16(f), headed Removal to third country, reads in full:
“Nothing in this section or § 208.17 shall prevent the Service from removing an alien to a third country other than the country to which removal has been withheld or deferred.”
There is an identical provision in the immigration courts’ own rules at 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(f), differing only in its internal cross-reference. Both still say “the Service,” which was the Immigration and Naturalization Service, abolished in 2003.
The regulation on deferral, 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(b), requires the immigration judge to tell the person that deferral “[d]oes not confer upon the alien any lawful or permanent immigration status,” “[w]ill not necessarily result in the alien being released from the custody of the Service,” and “[i]s effective only until terminated,” and that the person “may be removed at any time to another country where he or she is not likely to be tortured.”
Text quoted from the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 8, issue of 3 September 2026, and cross-checked against the Legal Information Institute. § 1208.17 has not been amended since 1999. The Coalition sets out the text; it does not interpret it.
Two federal courts recorded, within seven weeks of each other, positions the United States government took about Cameroon in the same months as these flights. Both are set out here as the record shows them.
A man holding withholding of removal to Morocco was given notice on 8 January 2026 that he would be removed to Cameroon. On 11 January he was transferred to the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas, in the words of the government’s own declaration, “for staging for removal to Cameroon.” He said he was afraid. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services screened him. From the declaration of Mark Kinsey, a deportation officer in the Denver field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, quoted by the court:
“Between January 13, 2026, and January 15, 2026, USCIS conducted a third country screening interview with Petitioner. At the conclusion of the screening, USCIS determined that Petitioner established it is more likely than not that he will be persecuted if removed to Cameroon.”
He was not removed. The court ordered his immediate release, and final judgment was entered on 10 February 2026. The ground of his fear was the treatment in Cameroon of a group to which he belongs; this page does not attach it to him. Same-sex conduct is a criminal offence in Cameroon, which is a fact about the state and is recorded elsewhere on this page.
Chennah v. Baltazar, No. 1:26-cv-00112-CNS (D. Colo. 23 January 2026), Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney, ECF 17, nine pages, read in full from the court’s own filing. The declaration is at ECF 14-1 at 5 to 6. This is a screening determination by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, recorded in a declaration by an officer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is not a judicial finding about Cameroon.
A Cameroonian national who said he had fled the country’s military, which accused him of arming separatists, was ordered removed on 31 July 2025 and granted withholding of removal to Cameroon. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then spent more than six months looking for a third country. It found none. The court ordered his release and enjoined removal to any third country unless the government first gives written notice in a language he understands, a minimum of ten days to raise a claim under the Convention against Torture, and fifteen days to seek reopening if the claim is not accepted.
The same order records what the government’s policy provided. Quoting the memorandum of 9 July 2025 as it was put before the court: removal to a third country with no notice where the receiving state has given assurances; otherwise twenty-four hours, or as little as six if the person is given an opportunity to speak to a lawyer; and the government “will not affirmatively ask whether the alien is afraid of being removed to the country of removal.”
Feh v. Noem, No. 3:26-cv-00578-LL-BLM (S.D. Cal. 11 March 2026), Judge Linda Lopez, ECF 6, nine pages, read in full. The memorandum of 9 July 2025 is described at ECF 1-3 at 2.
On 1 August 2026 all thirty-six filed before the Administrative Court in Yaoundé. They ask the court to suspend the arrangement between Cameroon and the United States, to grant them legal residency in Cameroon, and to prevent their deportation to their countries of origin. Their case is that the arrangement was never ratified, and they ask the court to rule on whether it complies with Cameroon’s constitution and its international obligations.
Their lawyer is Fru Awah, who told Agence France-Presse:
“Cameroon cannot be used as a transit point… we are asking the court to affirm that no administrative arrangement can override Cameroon’s constitutional, statutory, and international obligations.”
As at 5 August 2026 the thirty-six were living in a centre run by the Cameroonian authorities with the International Organization for Migration. Agence France-Presse reports that they “have been deprived of identity documents and a clear legal status” and are subject to restrictions on movement.
Agence France-Presse, 5 August 2026, as carried by Arab News and others. This supersedes the figure of fifteen held in Yaoundé, which was Human Rights Watch’s count as at 20 February 2026 and is retained above with its date.
A distinction to hold before reading this. Everything in this section concerns Cameroonian nationals returned to their own country between 2019 and 2021. It is not about the thirty-six third-country nationals of 2026. It is on this page because it is the only sustained record of what Cameroonian authorities did to people the United States deported to Cameroon, and because the United States has since acted on it.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 41 Cameroonian asylum seekers deported from the United States between 2019 and January 2021. Its research indicated that government forces “detained or imprisoned at least 39 deported people after return,” nineteen of them documented in jails, prisons, military camps or other facilities, for periods from days to months, often incommunicado. It documented “13 cases of torture, physical or sexual abuse, or assault of deported people by state agents.” Three women alleged that members of the security forces raped them, one after arrest and two in detention. In seven documented cases, state agents beat, abducted, detained, harassed and in one case reportedly killed relatives of deportees.
Human Rights Watch concluded: “By returning Cameroonians to face persecution, torture, and other serious harm, the US violated the principle of nonrefoulement, the foundation of international refugee law.”
Human Rights Watch, “How Can You Throw Us Back?”: Asylum Seekers Abused in the US and Deported to Harm in Cameroon, 10 February 2022, 149 pages. The report’s own analysis records that some of the incommunicado cases “may constitute enforced disappearances”; the qualifier is the report’s and is kept here.
In a Freedom of Information Act case brought by Project South, the court’s statement of facts opens:
“Between August 2020 and February 2021, the Trump and Biden Administrations deported, or planned to deport, nearly two hundred Cameroonian asylum seekers. There were reports of cruel or inhuman treatment, and allegations that migrants were coerced into signing removal papers.”
The court recorded that the case “concerns 81 deportees on 3 flights.” It held that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security had failed to prove they conducted an adequate search, and directed searches of the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, the ICE Attaché for Cameroon, and the Removal Division of Enforcement and Removal Operations responsible for special high risk charter flights. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had invoked 8 C.F.R. § 208.6, the asylum confidentiality regulation, to withhold records in the case.
Project South v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (S.D.N.Y. 12 March 2024), read in full. The passage quoted is in the opinion’s statement of facts and is footnoted to outside sources; it is the court’s recital of reports and allegations, not a finding.
Since May 2024 the United States government has approved the return of twenty-seven Cameroonian asylum seekers who were deported in 2020. The Department of Homeland Security granted them humanitarian parole. They are permitted to remain for one year, and during that time they may reapply for asylum.
The returns were permitted on humanitarian grounds, “in part based on US asylum confidentiality violations that contributed to their harm in Cameroon.” Before the deportations, officials prevented many of them from reaching their luggage, which held their asylum documents, “leading to their discovery by Cameroonian authorities.” Their parole applications state that this violated 8 C.F.R. § 208.6.
The Coalition knows of no comparable return from any country in this project.
“Deported Cameroonian Asylum Seekers Returned to US,” 18 July 2024, a statement by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, Human Rights Watch, the Cameroon Advocacy Network, Witness at the Border, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Texas A&M School of Law Legal Clinics. The confidentiality violation is asserted in the parole applications, as the statement records; it is not a published finding of the Department of Homeland Security.
What follows is what exists, not what is guaranteed. Human Rights Watch reported on 20 February 2026 that Cameroonian authorities “immediately detained the deportees, despite having no legal basis for doing so,” that fifteen were still held in Yaoundé, and that people told a lawyer they “felt pressured to return to their countries of origin.” Two had already gone. Anyone arriving should expect detention and should assume that the first hours matter.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
The International Committee of the Red Cross has had its regional delegation for Central Africa in Yaoundé since 1992. It restores family links between people separated by armed violence and migration, and it visits people deprived of their freedom to check that treatment and conditions meet internationally recognised standards. Its contact details are below. A family that does not know which country you are in cannot instruct a lawyer for you.
The Ordre des Avocats au Barreau du Cameroun, the Cameroon Bar Association, has its headquarters in Yaoundé, the city where the deportees are held. Human Rights Watch records that a lawyer was already assisting some of this group in February 2026, though it does not name that lawyer and neither does this page.
The Cameroon Human Rights Commission was created by law n°2019/014 of 19 July 2019 and describes itself as the institution in charge of the promotion and protection of human rights “including also the Prevention of Torture.” Its headquarters is in Yaoundé and it runs a public campaign inviting people to denounce human rights violations. It has a Subcommission on the Prevention of Torture that visits places of detention. Read the next section before relying on it, but make the record anyway: a complaint is a dated document, and a dated document is where everything later starts.
Cameroon is one of the few states in this project against which an individual can complain to the United Nations Committee against Torture. That route is set out below. It turns on being able to show what you fear and where, so what you say now, and to whom, and on what date, will matter later.
Legal representation
Cameroon Bar Association
Established 1972, operating under Law No. 90/059 of 19 December 1990. Headquarters at Avenue Charles Atangana, behind the Mess des Officiers, Olezoa, Yaoundé. No telephone number or email address is published on its public landing page, so approach is in person or through a lawyer already instructed.
Checked September 8, 2026 · Ordre des Avocats au Barreau du Cameroun, official site
Official complaint bodies
National human rights institution
Created by law n°2019/014 of 19 July 2019. Mandate covers promotion and protection of human rights and includes the prevention of torture, through a Subcommission on the Prevention of Torture that visits places of detention. Headquarters at 864, Avenue Winston Churchill, Hippodrome, Yaoundé, next to the British Council. P.O. Box 20317, Yaoundé. Ten regional branches. Read the limits recorded in the next section.
Checked September 8, 2026 · Cameroon Human Rights Commission, official site
International presence
Detention visits and restoring family links
Based in Yaoundé since 1992. Visits people deprived of their freedom to check that treatment and living conditions comply with internationally recognised standards, and works to restore family links between people separated by armed violence and to find missing people. Rue 1805, BP 6157, Yaoundé.
Checked September 8, 2026 · ICRC, Our work in Cameroon
Cameroon sits on opposite sides of the two main torture mechanisms, and the difference is worth understanding before choosing where to put your effort.
Cameroon acceded to the Convention against Torture on 19 December 1986 and, on 12 October 2000, made the declaration under article 22 recognising the competence of the Committee “to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals subject to its jurisdiction who claim to be victims of a violation.” The declaration covers situations and facts arising after that date, which includes anything that happens now.
This is unusual among the states in this project. Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Central African Republic and Cabo Verde have not accepted individual complaints. Cameroon has. A person held in Cameroon, or someone acting on their behalf, may take a case to the Committee directly.
United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, the depositary’s own record of declarations, checked 8 September 2026.
The African Commission has heard and decided communications brought against Cameroon, including Bakweri Land Claims Committee v. Cameroon, Communication 260/2002, decided at its 16th Extraordinary Session in July 2014. That case was brought by an organisation rather than an individual, which is permitted. The route exists and has been used against this state.
Cameroon has no national preventive mechanism and is not subject to visits by the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, because it has never deposited its instrument of ratification of the Optional Protocol. The Committee against Torture put it plainly in December 2024:
“the Committee finds it regrettable that the State party has not yet deposited the instrument of ratification of the Optional Protocol, despite the conclusion of the domestic ratification process in 2010 and the commitment made by the State party during the fourth cycle of the universal periodic review”
This page recommends making a record with the Cameroon Human Rights Commission. It also has to tell you what the Committee against Torture found about that Commission two months before these transfers began. Its resources “remain insufficient for it to do all that it is meant to do to prevent torture.” Non-governmental organisations “are rarely given leave to examine conditions in places of detention” and such access as they get “depends largely on the relationship between the NGO representatives and prison officials.” And the Subcommission on the Prevention of Torture does not publish the reports of its visits.
The Committee recommended that Cameroon ensure the Commission “is able to make regular, independent and unannounced visits to all places of deprivation of liberty in the country, both civilian and military, and to interview all detainees in confidence.”
None of that is a reason not to file. It is a reason not to expect the filing, by itself, to produce a visit.
CAT/C/CMR/CO/6, distributed 10 December 2024, paragraphs 26 and 27, read in full from the United Nations document system.
At paragraph 17 the Committee told Cameroon to:
“Adopt adequate legal and procedural safeguards to ensure that all asylum-seekers and other persons in need of international protection arriving at its borders, regardless of their legal status and mode of arrival, have access to fair and effective refugee status determination procedures and are not subject to refoulement”;
“Uphold the principle of non-refoulement by ensuring that, in practice, no one is expelled, returned or extradited to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture”;
“Investigate all cases of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, acts of violence, sexual exploitation and extortion to which refugees and asylum-seekers are subjected and ensure that the perpetrators of such acts are prosecuted and given appropriate sentences, and that the victims and the members of their families are made whole.”
The same paragraph asks Cameroon to put in place mechanisms to identify vulnerable asylum seekers, “including victims of torture or ill-treatment,” give them priority access to the refugee status determination procedure, and refer them to services without delay.
On 20 February 2026 Human Rights Watch called on Cameroon to release the remaining deportees immediately, to ensure they are protected from refoulement, to arrange their return to the United States, to respect freedom of the press, and to hold authorities accountable for the abuses documented. It called on the United States to press for the return of those deported and to end its deportation agreements with third countries.
Human Rights Watch, “Abuses in Cameroon After US Deports Third-Country Nationals,” 20 February 2026. The researcher named is Lauren Seibert, Senior Researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. The figure of fifteen still held is as at that date and has not been updated by any source the Coalition has found.
Whether the thirty-six are still in the centre, and under what conditions. Whether any of them has been returned to a country of origin since the two reported in February 2026. Whether the Cameroon Human Rights Commission has visited them, which would not be public in any event because it does not publish visit reports. What role, if any, the United Nations refugee agency has with this group, as distinct from the International Organization for Migration, which runs the centre with the government. Whether Cameroon has made the declaration under article 34(6) of the African Court Protocol that would allow an individual to go directly to the African Court rather than to the Commission. And the text of the arrangement, which neither government has published.
Closed since the last version of this page: the name of counsel, which is Fru Awah; the count, which is thirty-six; and whether any organisation has a role, which the International Organization for Migration does.
If you know any of the rest, the Coalition wants to hear from you.
Every entry below is a fact with a source.
10 Feb 2022
Human Rights Watch publishes a 149-page report on 41 Cameroonians deported from the United States between 2019 and January 2021, documenting at least 39 detained after return and 13 cases of torture, physical or sexual abuse by state agents.
12 Mar 2024
In Project South v. ICE the Southern District of New York records that nearly two hundred Cameroonian asylum seekers were deported or planned for deportation between August 2020 and February 2021, and orders new searches including of the ICE Attaché for Cameroon.
May 2024
The United States begins approving the return of twenty-seven of those deported in 2020, on humanitarian parole, in part because of asylum confidentiality violations.
22 Nov 2024
OHCHR announces the Committee against Torture’s findings on Cameroon at the close of its 81st session.
10 Dec 2024
CAT/C/CMR/CO/6 is distributed. The Committee is deeply troubled by torture, summary executions, mass graves, enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention in unofficial places of detention or military bases by Cameroon’s security forces, the Rapid Intervention Battalion, the police and the gendarmerie, and finds that Cameroon has subjected Nigerian asylum seekers to collective expulsion in violation of non-refoulement.
19 Nov 2025
ICE serves A.A.M., a Somali national holding withholding of removal to Somalia, with a notice that he will be removed to Cameroon. Under the Third Country Removal Policy he is removable in as little as 24 hours.
20 Nov 2025
The Eastern District of California enters an order preventing the removal.
24-25 Nov 2025
A reasonable fear interview is scheduled for the next business day. Counsel asks for time to prepare. She is told on the morning of 25 November that the interview will begin at 11 a.m. that day.
26 Nov 2025
USCIS issues a screening notice finding no credible fear as to Cameroon. It does not address the expert evidence.
1 Dec 2025
The Government files a status report describing the screening notice as “the final administrative agency decision in the matter” and stating that “the sole impediment to petitioner’s prompt removal to Cameroon at this juncture is this Court’s order.”
4 Dec 2025
A.A.M. v. Andrews, 815 F. Supp. 3d 1124 (E.D. Cal.). Temporary restraining order granted in part. The court finds a protected liberty interest in immigration judge review of the fear determination.
8 Dec 2025
The arrangement between the United States and Cameroon is reported to have been agreed. Neither government has published it.
7 Jan 2026
The Department of State determines that Cameroon’s diplomatic assurances are credible.
Jan-May 2026
Thirty-six people from nine African countries are flown to Cameroon on four flights, on 15 January, 16 February, 29 April and 27 May 2026, under an agreement neither government has published.
23 Jan 2026
In Chennah v. Baltazar the District of Colorado records that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services found a man staged for removal to Cameroon had established it is more likely than not that he would be persecuted there. He is released and not removed.
16 Feb 2026
Second flight, eight people, of whom seven are reported to have held withholding of removal and one deferral of removal under the Convention against Torture.
20 Feb 2026
Human Rights Watch reports that Cameroon detained them immediately with no legal basis, that fifteen remain held in Yaoundé, that they felt pressured to return to their countries of origin, and that two already have.
11 Mar 2026
In Feh v. Noem the Southern District of California orders the release of a Cameroonian granted withholding of removal to Cameroon whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement had spent six months trying to send to an unnamed third country.
10 June 2026
Alhadje v. Guardian (D. Colo.). The court holds that assurances do not answer the process question, and grants in part a hearing before an immigration judge prior to any removal to Cameroon.
12 June 2026
Alhassan v. Perez (S.D. Tex., Laredo Div.). The court records that the assurances are general rather than individual, and is unpersuaded that they satisfy due process.
1 Aug 2026
All thirty-six file before the Administrative Court in Yaoundé, seeking suspension of the arrangement, legal residency, and protection from removal to their countries of origin.
5 Aug 2026
Agence France-Presse reports the thirty-six living in a centre run by the Cameroonian authorities with the International Organization for Migration, without identity documents or clear legal status, with movement restricted.
The Coalition publishes what it can source and says plainly what it cannot. The following is open on this page.
The count, resolved. This page previously carried the count as an open question, giving seventeen for January and February 2026 and noting that a tracker gave thirty-six overall without an established period. The period is now established. Agence France-Presse reported on 5 August 2026 that thirty-six people were transferred between January and May 2026, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Senegal, Zimbabwe and Morocco. The seventeen Human Rights Watch documented are the first two of those four flights.
To pin. The text of the January 2026 State Department credibility determination, which so far exists for us only as a court’s summary of the Government’s assertion. The agreement itself, which neither government has published. And what has happened to the fifteen since February 2026.
A distinction to keep. The Committee against Torture’s findings concern Cameroon’s treatment of its own population and of people caught in the Anglophone and Far-North conflicts. They are evidence of how the state behaves, not a finding about the deportees. The finding about the deportees is Human Rights Watch’s, and it is recent, specific and independent.
Corrections and updates, 8 September 2026. The count is now given as thirty-six across four flights between January and May 2026. Until today this page gave seventeen for January and February 2026 and recorded thirty-six as a tracker figure over an unestablished period; Agence France-Presse’s reporting of 5 August 2026 established the period, and the open item is closed. The figure of fifteen held in Yaoundé is retained where it appears, anchored to its date of 20 February 2026, and is superseded by the position as at 5 August 2026. Counsel for the thirty-six is named. The account of D.V.D. has been corrected: the order of 25 February 2026 also dissolved the preliminary injunction and dismissed four counts, and the judgment is stayed pending an appeal argued on 13 May 2026 and undecided.